The Silver Sword

Blurb

The Silver Sword is a novel by Ian Serraillier, a children's classic, first published in the UK in 1956 by Jonathan Cape and then by Puffin Books in 1960. It had also been published in the U.S. under the title Escape From Warsaw. The story is based upon fact, although fictional names are given to a few of the places mentioned. The account of the Red Army on the march derived from eye-witness accounts in Jan Stransky's East Wind over Prague. An eight-part children's television series was produced by the BBC in 1957 at the Lime Grove Studios in London, and a further BBC television version was produced in the early 1970s.
John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, has acknowledged a debt to the novel: "the book stands out for me as a great children's classic – [it] was my first introduction to the Second World War in fiction, to the horrors of the Nazi era, and the fear that capture could instill in the minds of its young heroes Ruth, Edek and Bronia."